Paolo Cognetti is an Italian writer, novelist, and editor from Milan. He divides his time between the city and his cabin in the Italian Alps. He is the author of The Wild Boy and The Eight Mountains, an international sensation that won Italy's Strega Prize and the French Prix Médicis étranger.
"The Eight Mountains is a novel about love for the mountains, but
more than that it is about those male relationships that rely on
the slow accumulation of understanding where nothing is directly
expressed: men, while feeling a lot, say very little, and
tragically, sometimes this can be fatal. Cognetti's novel, poetic
and properly romantic, achieves a moving grandeur." --Sunday Times
(UK)
"The Eight Mountains is an old-fashioned novel in the best sense of
the word. With gorgeously understated, unhurried prose, Cognetti
crafts the story of an unlikely friendship between a city boy named
Pietro and a young cow herder, Bruno, who lives in the Alpine
mountains where the members of Pietro's family spend their
vacations....Cognetti's mix of patient observation and sharp
insight into the natural world recalls the mastery of Helen
Macdonald's H Is for Hawk....Even though Pietro is solitary and
remote, one can't help caring for him. The brilliant writing helps,
but there's something more: His love for nature is profound, a sign
that deep currents swirl beneath his crotchety surface, pulling the
reader into the vortex of his emotions. Carnell and Segre capture
the tone of Cognetti's calm descriptions of nature, setting them in
tense contrast with Pietro's discordant thoughts."-- New York Times
Book Review
"The Eight Mountains is written in such arrestingly simple language
- you can almost feel the Italian phrasing in the translation from
Simon Carnell and Erica Segre - that it's impossible not to be
gradually sucked into the peaks and valleys of Pietro's
life....[T]here's something about the vertiginous setting that
lends itself to this kind of contemplation. Cognetti captures the
elation and melancholy that comes with reaching a spectacular
summit, only to realize the minuscule part we play in the panorama
of life."--The Guardian
"A fine book, a rich, achingly painful story that is made for all
of us who have ever felt a hunger for the mountains. Few books have
so accurately described the way stony heights can define one's
sense of joy and rightness. And it is an exquisite unfolding of the
deep way humans may love one another."-Annie Proulx
"A moving meditation on man in time and nature."--World Literature
Today
"A novel that deals with deep themes - friendship, the relationship
between generations, the management of one's life - in simple and
precise yet evocative language."-Corriere della Sera
"A slim novel of startling expansion that subtly echoes its
setting."-Vogue
"A timeless novel."-Panorama
"Cognetti captures the elation and melancholy that come with
reaching a spectacular summit, only to realize the miniscule part
we play in the panoarama of life." --The Observer (UK)
"Cognetti's novel elegantly paints the terrifyingly beautiful
landscape of the mountains at the heart of a brotherly friendship
that proves to transcend anything."-Booklist
"Could Cognetti be the new Elena Ferrante?"-The Bookseller
"There is something of [Cognetti's] countryman Primo Levi in the
wonderfully lucid sentences and contemplative tone of his
prose....a beautifully crafted piece of writing, whose inevitable
conclusion movingly sees the past repeat itself."--Irish Times
"Through essential yet extraordinarily evocative and intense
language, Cognetti constructs a short novel that many have already
called a classic, in which undoubtedly echo the masters who
inspired it." -Critica Letteraria
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